Will Cathcart, Meta’s head of WhatsApp, has described the bill as the most concerning piece of legislation currently being discussed in the Western world.
The executive told reporters the company would refuse to comply if asked to weaken the privacy of encrypted messages, preferring to leave the UK than provide a less-secure service to users.
“We’ve recently been blocked in Iran, for example. But we’ve never seen a liberal democracy do that,” said Cathcart. “The reality is, our users all around the world want security. Ninety-eight per cent of our users are outside the UK. They do not want us to lower the security of the product, and just as a straightforward matter, it would be an odd choice for us to choose to lower the security of the product in a way that would affect those 98 per cent of users.”
The Online Safety Bill has been presented by the government as a ground-breaking law that will protect the privacy and safety of children in the digital...